Friday, August 23, 2013

Project Chick

Unschooling is interest based learning where children naturally learn from their environment and are trusted to learn what they need to learn to succeed in life.  Parents act as a resource person and role model to help educate their children in a respectful manner.  Unschooling will often look different with each family.  This blog includes my family's approach to the unschooling philosophy.  I will sometimes include ideas and challenges and sometimes I will include a blog of an actual day or event of our unschooling family.  Feel free to follow my blog if you would like to learn more.  Thank you for taking time to read my blog!

It all began on April fools day.  There was 1 incubator and 6 eggs, the future was unknown.  A couple days later, there was a pip pip pip and then an egg cracked open.  The first chick got her egg stuck on her head and flailed around knocking all the other eggs around as if they were bowling pins and Bowling Ball was born.  Then pip pip pip, Chicken Nugget was born.  Then we had to go to bed.  The next morning there were a couple more chicks and then finally there were 5 chicks and 1 egg.  That final egg was unfortunately just an egg, so we had one dud. 

I placed the cute little chicks in a tote in our playroom expecting them to stay these cute little chicks for a couple weeks, but they were big and goonie looking before we knew it.  They started growing feathers by day 3 and started smelling super bad after a couple weeks, so they found their next temporary home in a cage in our garage.

They were 6 weeks old before we realized that we had 5 Leghorn hens.  We were so excited that we were not going to have to get rid of any of our chickens.  We knew that we would not be able to keep a rooster with the crowing and not laying any eggs issue, so we were very happy to have 5 hens.

My husband decided to attack the chicken coop project and it seemed to be at a standstill until an episode of Bob the Builder came on the public television station and amazingly the project for the day was a chicken coop.  I excitedly got my husband to show him and we now have a Bob the Builder inspired chicken coop.  He was very Macgyver like with his approach and tied it together with old dog chains and used a metal pan from a dog cage for the roof and boards for the box that my son decided to paint green.  He was helping his Dad build this fine home.  We then put chicken wire around a fenced area and used a child safety gate as our door.  The MacGyver/Bob the Builder/hillbillyish chicken coop was then complete and ready for the girls.

Since my husband built the chicken coop, my job was to catch the chickens.  I imagined myself chasing after the girls while they cackled and dodged me as I tried to grab them running down our ravine and then falling on my head into a patch of poison ivy, but luckily it went much smoother than this.  I had the kids get on one side of the cage while I sat by the door and they scared the girls into my arms.  I then carried them out to their new home.  It only took a few minutes and the girls were so happy in their new home.

Over the next couple months, the kids enjoyed going out and helping feed the chickens and we would go out and chat with them with chicken language.  I actually found myself outside chatting with the chickens for a half hour one day and was amazed how quickly the time flew by and how much I enjoyed their company.  The girls' personalities were really starting to shine and I was starting to realize that they were really quite enjoyable pets and I was wondering why I didn't have pet chickens years ago.

Now I am going to get to why I decided to write this blog today.  Today was a very special day.  There was a very monumental event that did in fact occur.  Today is the day we have been waiting for, the day we have prepared for since we received the 6 eggs on April fools day.  Today is the day we imagined as Bowling Ball slammed her egg into all of her sisters' little egg homes to make the hatching event so exciting.  Today is the day I imagined when I saw our cute little fuzzy chicks and when I learned that our adolescent looking chickens were all hens.  Today is a very important day in history.  On this day, August 23, 2013, one of our girls laid her first egg.

 
1 incubator, 6 eggs


 
Bowling Ball
 
 
Cute Little Chicks
 
 
Goonie Girls
 
 
Stinky Girls
 
 
The Bob the Builder inspired coop
 
 
The Chatty Girls
 
 
The Big Chicken
 
 
The 1st egg
 
 
 
 
 


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